


the knight herself

by psikeval



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: First Meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 14:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6242239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psikeval/pseuds/psikeval
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Since reading Varric’s <i>Tale of the Champion</i>—”</p><p>“Oh no,” mutters Aveline, low and dark, with a sharp look toward Varric that he ignores.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the knight herself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cathybites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathybites/gifts).



On the whole, Kirkwall bears little resemblance to Varric’s descriptions. It’s larger, the streets more complex and terribly difficult to navigate. Parts of the city Cassandra had assumed to be separate are in fact divided only by name—and, in the places between Lowtown and Darktown, by which particular unpleasant stench dominates the air. Navigating its streets in full armor is also a great deal more strenuous than she'd had any reason to suspect. When Cassandra stops halfway up the steps leading to Hightown, winded as a raw recruit and pressing a palm to the stitch in her side, she’s more than willing to entertain theories that the city was designed for some dark purpose.

Hightown, never as clean or as picturesque as its fictional counterpart, is at least on its way to recovering from the worst of the damage. In place of the chantry there is a memorial, carved stone all but swallowed up by flowers and stubs of candles. The mansion where Hawke once lived, now abandoned, lies farther from the city's center than she’d pictured it, a labyrinth of alleys away down the steepest hill of Hightown.

But the chains in the harbor are precisely the same, and as Cassandra steps inside the Viscount’s Keep, its grey stone walls towering high, she thinks that it, too, is precisely as she’d always imagined it. Bright sunlight streams down from above through glass windows placed in the ceiling. The throne room, where Hawke fought the Arishok, is set so far back within the building that she cannot even see the doors that lead to it from here.

Instead she follows Varric up the stairs toward the barracks of the Kirkwall city guard.

It is odd to consider this an everyday place, with rooms one might enter as a matter of course. She looks around at the youngest guard recruits milling about the barracks and wonders if they've thought, even once today,  _Hawke was here_. Or has the Champion's story already become too much for anyone to believe, a charming fiction of a refugee who dared to do so much in a mere ten years?

Pointless matters to wonder, really.

“Well, this is it,” says Varric, gesturing to a heavy door hanging open to their left. It, too, seems deceptively innocuous, the wood and iron blind to all they have witnessed, ignorant of the company they keep. Cassandra hesitates only briefly before stepping inside.

The guard-captain glances up, and Cassandra's breath catches in her chest. Surely she must be dreaming, to be given the chance to meet Aveline.

She’s always pictured Aveline Vallen as the woman was first described in _The Tale of the Champion,_ desperately defending her doomed husband Wesley—and sometimes, truth be told, as the stubborn, stalwart heroine of _Swords and Shields_ , who seems to be yet another example of Varric’s friends and acquaintances artlessly transposed into fiction. In either case, the picture painted was of an fierce young warrior, fair-skinned and frowning, with gleaming armor and long hair that inspired interminable comparisons to flames or a sunset.

Guard-Captain Aveline, tanned almost to the shade of her freckles by the relentless Kirkwall sun, stands in her office wearing a faded brown tunic, patched trousers and heavy boots. Her hair, shorn close to the sides of her head, is turning quickly white to match the lines around her eyes. She isn’t old—perhaps Cassandra’s age, or a little more—but years of fighting always leave their mark.

The crows’ feet around Aveline’s green eyes deepen when she smiles at Varric. “I knew there was trouble on its way," she remarks, her voice low and blunt, its feigned exasperation speaking to years of friendship, hundreds of shared memories. "You haven’t been up harrassing Bran, have you?”

“Not yet,” says Varric easily, “but it’s a very good suggestion.”

Aveline scoffs and looks him over a moment longer, assessing the state of Bianca on his back and his battered old coat, before turning towards Cassandra with an expression that has already cooled considerably. “And you must be the Seeker. The Divine’s right hand.”

It is difficult for Cassandra to pretend she does not feel distinctly nervous.

For lack of genuine confidence she stands perfectly straight, arms behind her back, chin jutting forward, and reminds herself that she is a woman who has faced down dragons. “I don’t believe I am either, now," she answers, with something like composure. "I serve the Inquisition.”

Her voice, at least, is good enough not to waver. Aveline still glares at her.

“Whoever you serve, I don’t take kindly to hearing my friends have been dragged from their homes in the middle of the night for questioning.”

Aveline crosses her arms. They are bare, and scarred, and so solidly muscled that even Cassandra is not unmoved by the implicit threat. It is also terribly disheartening, to feel disliked by a woman she has read so much about, who has done so many good and honorable things—not that she expected Aveline to consider her a friend, of course. That would be foolish and presumptuous, surely, but—

“Aww. This is sweet,” says Varric. “But don’t you think we’ve put all that behind us? Hawke lost, Hawke found, Hawke gone off to Weisshaupt? Old news, really.”

Cassandra can feel the frown on her face deepening, as it always does when she is feeling upset and unsure. “I apologize if my conduct seemed inappropriate, but I truly believed that our cause was important enough to warrant it.”

“Which is more of an apology than _I’ve_ ever gotten, if anyone cares—“

“No,” Aveline interrupts without sparing him a glance.

“Oh, fine,” he sighs, immensely put-upon. “Don't mind me. I'm just the one whose book got stabbed.”

Aveline says nothing, though her eyes are...thoughtful, perhaps. Considering either Varric's complaint or Cassandra's attempt to explain. In any case, the effect is rather daunting. Cassandra picks at a loose thread on her left glove, gathers her courage and lifts her head once more.

“Guard-Captain,” she tries. “If I may, while I am here...”

This is at least as foolish as it is frightening, but Cassandra knows in her heart she'd never forgive herself for not trying. Too stubborn she may be, too brash and too romantic, but she hopes never to be dishonest. To that end, she swallows hard and says the rest:

“I want to tell you how much I admire you.”

Aveline blinks, brow furrowed. “Oh?”

“Since reading Varric’s _Tale of the Champion_ —”

“Oh no,” mutters Aveline in a different, darker tone, with a sharp look toward Varric that he ignores.

“—and hearing the story behind it, I’ve been impressed by all you’ve accomplished. Your work as guard-captain, your struggle against corruption and the improvements to the city in the past ten years—they are substantial. I think you’re a remarkable person.” Having said this, and struggling terribly to look Aveline in the eye, Cassandra subsides. It will be worth it, she hopes, to have had the chance to say the words aloud.

She clings to that hope when the silence in the room seems to stretch on for an eternity.

“Well,” Aveline says at last, eyebrows raised, her expression difficult to read. “Thank you.”

“Maybe she can autograph your book, Seeker.”

“Shut up,” says Aveline comfortably, just as Cassandra hisses “ _Hush_ ,” and for a moment the two women exchange a look of complete understanding. Cassandra is blushing, the old scar pale against her reddened cheeks, while Aveline’s stern mouth turns up wryly at the corners.

“All right. I’m off to go check on Daisy.”

They stand there together in increasingly companionable silence, two warriors who have seen too much and rarely taken time to rest. Even with Aveline's hair cropped short, the differences between them are striking. Aveline is broader in the shoulders—broader everywhere, truth be told. The strength of Cassandra’s shield arm tends to surprise those who haven’t met her, but with Aveline, there is not a moment’s doubt of what she can do.

If King Cailan could not emerge victorious with Aveline among his troops, the battle of Ostagar must have truly been lost before it began.

Rather than say such a thing aloud, Cassandra clears her throat and asks, “He truly never gave you a nickname?”

“No,” Aveline sighs, softened by a wry half-smile. “He never did. But Hawke never got one either, so I suppose I can’t complain about my company.”

It is only the allusion to Hawke that breaks the spell and reminds Cassandra of all that she might be intruding upon. Varric, at least, has years of shared history to fall back upon. He grew up here, fought for years beside the likes of Hawke and Aveline, while Cassandra remains an outsider.

Accordingly, she takes a half-step back. “I don’t want to be in the way. We’re only here in the city temporarily.”

“It's no trouble. I've heard a lot about you.”

But from _whom_? Varric? Letters from Hawke, or Cullen, or the pirate taking jobs from the Inquisition? There are far too many possible answers, and none of them are particularly promising. "Ah," says Cassandra, hoping to sound calm and noncommital.

Aveline tilts her head just slightly, like a dog that's caught a sound to faint to hear. Then she snorts quietly and smiles, shaking her head.

“All right. How about I buy you a drink?”

“At the Hanged Man?” she blurts out before she can help herself, then adds, “Forgive me. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to see it with my own eyes.” 

“And smell it with your own nose,” says Aveline under her breath. “Come on, then.”

 

 


End file.
